Schuylers, and who was our next neighbor and cordial friend. He was now old, detached from the world, and too deaf to be an easy companion; yet he had much various information, and was endeared to us by similarity of principle.

Matters were beginning to be in this state the first winter I went to live with Aunt. Her friends were much dispersed; all conversation was tainted with politics,-Cromwellian politics, too, which of all things she disliked. Her nephew, Cortlandt Schuyler, who had been a great Nimrod ever since he could carry a gun, and who was a man of strict honor and nice feelings, took such a melancholy view of things, and so little relished that Stamp Act, which was the exclusive subject of all conversation, that he devoted himself more and more to the chase, and seemed entirely to renounce a society which he had never greatly loved. As I shall not refer to him again, I shall only mention here, that this estimable person was taken away from the evil to come two years after, by a premature death, being killed by a fall from his horse in hunting. What sorrows were hid from his eyes by this timely escape from scenes which would have been to him peculiarly wounding!

If Madame's comforts in society were diminished, her domestic satisfactions were not less so. By the time I came to live with her, Mariamat and Dianamat were almost superannuated, and had lost, in a great measure, the restraining power they used to exercise over their respective offspring. Their woolly heads were snow-white, and they had become so feeble, that they sat each in her great chair at the opposite side of the fire. Their wonted jealousy was now embittered to rancor, and their love of tobacco greater than ever. They had arrived at that happy period of ease and indolence, which left them at full liberty to smoke and scold the whole day long; this they did with such unwearied perseverance, and in a manner so ludicrous, that to us young people they were a perpetual comedy.

There

Sorely now did Aunt lament the promise she had kept so faithfully, never to sell any of the colonel's negroes. was so little to do for fourteen persons, except the business they created for each other, and it was so impossible to keep them from too freely sharing the plenty of her liberal house, that idleness and abundance literally began to corrupt them,

All these privations and uneasinesses will in some measure account for such a person as Madame taking such pleasure in the society of an overgrown child. But then she was glad to escape from dark prospects and cross politics to the amusement derived from the innocent cheerfulness natural to that time of life. A passion for reading, and a very comprehensive memory too, had furnished my mind with more variety of knowledge than fell to the lot of those who, living in large families and sharing the amusements of childhood, were not, like me, driven to that only resource. All this will help to account for a degree of confidence and favor, daily increasing, which ended in my being admitted to sleep in a little bed beside her, which never happened to any other. In the winter nights, our conversations often encroached on the earlier hours of morning. The future appeared to her dubious and cheerless; which was one reason, I suppose, that her active mind turned solely on retrospection. She saw that I listened with delighted attention to the tales of other times, which no one could recount so well. These, too, were doubly interesting, as, like the sociable angel's conversation with our first father, they related to the origin and formation of all I saw around me; they afforded food for reflection, to which I was very early addicted, and hourly increased my veneration for her whom I already considered as my polar star. The great love I had for her first gave interest to her details; and again, the nature of these details increased my esteem for the narThus passed this winter of felicity, which so much enlarged my stock of ideas, that in looking back upon it I thought I had lived three years in one.

rator.

CHAPTER LV.

Return to the Flats.

SUMMER came, and with it visitors, as usual, to Madame from New York and other places; among whom, I remember, were her nieces, Mrs. L. and Mrs. Č. I went to the Flats, and was, as usual, kept very close to my needlework;

but though there was no variety to amuse me, summer slid by very fast. My mind was continually occupied with Aunt, and all the passages of her life. My greatest pleasure was to read over again the books I had read to her, and recollect her observations upon them. I often got up and went out to the door to look at places where particular things had happened. She spent the winter nights in retrospections of her past life; and I spent the summer days in retrospections of these winter nights. But these were not my only pleasures. The banks of the river, and the opposite scenery, delighted me; and, adopting all Aunt's tastes and attachments, I made myself believe I was very fond of Pedrom, and Susanna Muet, as the widow of Jeremiah was called. My attention to them excited their kindness; and the borrowed sentiment, on my part, soon became a real one. These old friends were very amusing. But then I had numberless young friends, who shared my attention, and were, in their own way, very amusing too. These were the objects of my earliest cares in the morning, and my needless solicitude all day. I had marked down in a list, between thirty and forty nests of various kinds of birds. It was an extremely dry summer; and I saw the parent birds, whom I diligently watched, often panting with heat, and, as I thought, fatigued. After all I had heard and seen of Aunt, I thought it incumbent on me to be good and kind to some being that needed my assistance. To my fellow-creatures my power did not extend; therefore I wisely resolved to adapt my mode of beneficence to the sphere of action assigned to me, and decided upon the judicious scheme of assisting all these birds to feed their young. My confederate, Marian, (our negro girl,) entered heartily into this plan; and it was the business of the morning, before tasks commenced, to slaughter innumerable insects, and gather quantities of cherries and other fruit for that purpose. Portions of this provision we laid beside every nest, and then applauded ourselves for saving the poor birds fatigue. This, from a pursuit, became a passion. Every spare moment was devoted to it; and every hour made new discoveries of the nature and habits of our winged friends, which we considered as amply recompensing our labors.

The most eager student of natural philosophy could not be more attentive to those objects, or more intent on making dis

coveries. One sad discovery we made that mortified us exceedingly. The mocking-bird is very scarce and very shy in this northern district. A pair came, however, to our inexpressible delight, and built a nest in a very high tree in our garden. Never was joy like ours. At the imminent risk of our necks we made shift to ascend to this lofty dwelling during the absence of the owners. Birds we found none, but three eggs of a color so equivocal, that deciding the point whether they were green or blue furnished matter of debate for the rest of the day. To see these treasures was delightful, and to refrain from touching them impossible. One of the young we resolved to appropriate, contrary to our general humane procedure; and the next weighty affair to be discussed, was the form and size of the cage which was to contain this embryo warbler. The parents, however, arrived. On examining the premises, by some mysterious mode of their own they discovered that their secret had been explored, and that profane hands had touched the objects of all their tenderness. Their plaintive cries we too well understood. That whole evening and all the next day they were busied in the orchard; while their loud lamentations, constantly reiterated, pierced us with remorse. We soon saw the gardennest forsaken; and a little further examination soon convinced us that the violated eggs had been transported to another place, where, however, they were not hatched. The delicate instinct which directed these creatures to form a new nest, and carry off their eggs, on finding they had been handled, did not, at the same time, inform them, that eggs carried away, and shaken by that motion during the process of incubation, cannot produce any thing.

These

The great barn, which I formerly described, afforded scope for our observations of this nature; and here we remarked a phenomenon that I am still at a loss to account for. In the highest part of that spacious and lofty roof, multitudes of swallows, of the martin species, made their nests. were constructed of mud or clay as usual, and, in the ordinary course of things, lasted, with some repairs, from year to year. This summer, however, being unusually hot and dry, the nests, in great numbers, cracked and fell down on the floor, with the young ones in them. We often found them in this situation, but always found the birds in them alive and

unhurt; and saw the old ones come to feed them on the floor, which they did with such eager confidence, that they often brushed so near as to touch us. Now we could no other way account for the nests always coming down with the birds unhurt in them, than by supposing that the swallows watched the fracture of the nests, and when they saw them about to fall, came round the descending fabric, and kept it in a kind of equilibrium. Of these birds we stood in such profound awe, that we never profited by the accident which put them in our power; we would not indeed, for any consideration, have touched them, especially after the sad adventure of the mocking-bird, which hung very heavy upon our consciences. Autumn came, and Aunt came at the appointed day, the anniversary of his death, to visit the tomb of her beloved consort. This ceremony always took place at that time. She concluded it with a visit to us, and an earnest request for my returning with her, and remaining the winter.

CHAPTER LVI.

Melancholy presages.-Turbulence of the people.

THE Conversations between my father and Aunt assumed a melancholy cast. Their hopes of a golden age in that country (now that the flames of war were entirely quenched) grew weaker. The repeal of the Stamp Act occasioned excessive joy, but produced little gratitude. The youth of the town, before that news arrived, had abandoned their wonted sports, and begun to amuse themselves with breaking the windows and destroying the furniture of two or three different people, who had, in succession, been suspected of being stamp-masters in embryo. My father grew fonder than ever of fishing and shooting, because birds and fish did not talk of tyranny and taxes. Sometimes we were refreshed by a visit from some of Aunt's nephews, the sons of the mayor. They always left us in great good-humor, for they spoke respectfully of our dear king, and dearer country. But this sun